David Baldacci: Divine Justice

"Tell me your name and where you're from."

"Danny. Danny Riker," he said grudgingly. "Satisfied? And what's your name?"

Stone didn't hesitate. "Ben." That had been his father's name. "From where, Danny Riker?"

" Divine , Virginia. Little coal-mining town just this side of hell."

"How far from here?"

"About here to the moon."

Stone sighed again. "Is your mother still there?"

"That's right."

"So you just left her in the little hellhole all by herself?"

"She's not alone, trust me."

"You got money to get back home?"

"Maybe."

"You sure, or did you lose it all in the poker game? They say you were cheating."

"They just said that because they can't play cards worth shit." He glanced over at Beefy and cracked a smile. "Ain't that right, fat boy?"

"Where were you headed to on the train?" Stone asked.

"Where there ain't no coal to mine."

"You worked in the mines?"

Danny looked around. "I'm hungry."

He walked off toward a greasy spoon visible about a block away. It had a neon sign spelling out "restaurant" in cursive, with only the final "T" still lighted. In his head Stone instantly dubbed it the "One T."

Stone glanced back at Beefy and his battered goons. Beefy had a knife in his hand. If Stone left Danny alone now he was certain the men would finish him off. He'd killed many men over the years. Perhaps it was worth a bit of a detour from his plans to save one.

They ate at the counter with Stone occasionally looking over his shoulder to stare at Beefy and his boys sitting at a booth gobbling up their burgers and fries and shooting nasty glances at them from over their beer mugs.

When Stone went to pay the check Danny dropped the cash on the bill and rose.

"Thanks for helping me out back there," he said, without a trace of an attitude.

"You're welcome."

"You fight pretty good for a geezer." Somehow this statement did not come out as an insult.

"I might not be as old as you think. I've just had a tough life."

"Ain't we all."

"So where to now?"

"Gotta keep rolling or else you die. Think somebody important said that once."

Not bad advice to live by, Stone thought. I'm a rolling stone right now.

As they left the One T Beefy confronted them outside the door, his two mates right behind him.

"Where the hell you two think you're going?"

"You know, I can set your nose back in place if you want," Stone said amiably.

"You lay another hand on me, you son of a bitch, I'll cut you bad." He brandished a knife. Well, it was technically a knife, but it was so small and the guy was handling it so awkwardly that Stone had trouble thinking of it as actually being a weapon.

"Okay. Good luck then."

He and Danny started to walk past when Beefy slashed at them with the blade.

A second later he dropped to his knees holding his belly. Danny rubbed his fist and looked down at his attacker.

"Not nearly as much fun when it's just one-on-one, is it, chunko?"

Beefy weakly threw a punch at Danny, catching him lightly on the knee. Danny wound up to nail him again, but then just pushed him away. He grinned at Stone. "Can't hit a man when he's down. Ain't sporting."

Stone glanced sharply at Beefy's two friends, who seemed to be deciding whether to attack or run. He said, "I'm done with you guys. So if you don't take your friend here and get the hell out of my life right now I'm going to beat both of you into a coma."

He knelt down, picked up the knife, and with a flick of his wrist tossed it ten feet where it embedded neatly in the wooden façade of the One T. Seconds later his two sidekicks were helping Beefy down the street as fast as they could go.

Danny was staring at the knife stuck in the wood, his mouth agape. He pulled it out and tossed it in a trash can. "Where'd you learn to throw like that?"

"Summer camp. So what's it going to be, Danny? Home to get patched up, or running around on that gimpy leg watching your back for those a-holes?"

"Home. Couple days. No more."

"Sounds like a plan."

"What about you?"

"Flop here for one night. Wait for the next train south. Tired of the cold." Just tired.

The men started walking down the street.

"I wasn't cheating at cards."

"I believe you."

"How come?"

"You don't seem dumb enough to cheat when it's three against one. How you getting to Divine? The train go there?"

Danny laughed. "Hell, nothing goes to Divine. Bus goes near it. Walk or thumb it from there. Won't be the first time for me."

Stone's gaze caught on a black sedan that pulled slowly down the street. It stopped next to a police car and the driver of the sedan rolled down his window and started talking to the cop. Stone's eyes dropped to the white government plate on the sedan.

Bureau car? Here? Did the train conductor suspect something and make a call?

Stone turned to face Danny. "Divine a pretty isolated place?"

Danny's gaze drifted to the twin cars and then back to Stone. He'd clearly noted Stone's reaction to the police car. "Isolated? Let me put it like this. Divine's the sort of place you got to really want to get to if you want to find it. Although why anyone would beats me. And once you do find it then the only thing you want to do is get the hell out of there."

"Sounds good."

"What?"

"Let's go."

"You're kidding, right? I'm telling you, man, it's hell."

"I don't think so, Danny."

"What makes you a damn expert?"

Because I've actually seen hell. And it wasn't in Virginia .

JOE KNOX CLIMBED IN his Range Rover and drove slowly home, deep in thought. He'd gone over every scrap of paper in that box and each held a startling revelation. Yet while the sum total of information was considerable, the investigative leads flowing from this intelligence were negligible. The CIA was exemplary in covering its tracks, and the Agency had outdone itself here. However, Knox had been able to piece a few things together.

The reason that Gray's home had been blown up six months ago seemed tied to an unauthorized CIA operation targeting the Soviets back in the 1980s. Exact details were not available and probably never would be. The connection in between was anything but clear. No names were available. One page in the box had stunned even the veteran Knox. There apparently had been a gun battle at the unfinished Capitol Visitor Center around the same time that Carter Gray's home had been destroyed. An unknown number of CIA paramilitary personnel had been killed, the real circumstances of their deaths hidden from public view by the Agency's very efficient disinformation machine. It seemed that Gray, then technically out of government, had been behind this mission. Who had killed the agents and why they were there in the first place remained a mystery.

A shoot-out in the middle of the Capitol? Gray must've been insane.

There was an indication in the file that Gray had met with the current CIA director, a man Knox considered a useless political appointee who had started at the Agency but had been brain-drained by his later years in the Congress. Whether Knox could get in to see the man was not a given. As Macklin Hayes had made clear, there was a difference of opinion at the Agency as to how this matter should proceed. Or not proceed.

Gray had also been given a secret audience with the president at Camp David. Knox suspected this piece of information was one of the ones Macklin Hayes had gotten hold of that he wasn't supposed to know about. Knox realized that the odds of his interrogating the president of the United States about this meeting were about the same as his spontaneously combusting while in the shower.